“It’s supposed to be a challenge, that’s why they call it a shortcut. If it was easy it would just be the way.”

– Rubin, Road Trip

Shortcuts get us to our goal faster, but not always easier. When it comes to video editing, drag-and-drop editing is intuitive and simple. It’s also excruciatingly slow and repetitive. Why then don’t more of us learn to use keyboard shortcuts to get our projects done faster?

In the past, I’ve shown students how to edit with keyboard shortcuts with mixed results. Everyone understands that using the keyboard instead of the mouse will be faster, but when it comes time to put it into practice, they get frustrated by the new workflow and quickly abandon the keyboard for their mouse.

The problem is that, for the first couple of hours editing with shortcuts, they’re slower than they are when they drag and drop. They’re in a hurry. They want to be done already.

But here’s the thing…in order to break through to the next level, no matter the skill, we sometimes have to accept a small, temporary reduction in our abilities in order to unlearn bad habits and replace them with good ones.

The same goes for learning to edit with the keyboard. It will take an hour or two to get used to this new way of working, but investing that relatively small amount of time now will pay HUGE returns down the road.

The same could be said of your career development. If you’re a recent college grad, looking to break into a career in media, a small investment of time and effort could propel your career forward 5 years ahead of your peers. WMI’s JobLab is specifically designed to help recent graduates quickly make the transition from “looking” to “gainfully employed.”

When I teach multimedia skills, whether it’s video, photo, audio, or web technologies, I always find myself wishing that I had more time. Every project is different and the nature of creativity means that there is no one right way to do it. At WMI, we try to throw you into the deep end and get you creating content quickly and learn by doing. Sometimes, I just don’t have the time to show you all the cool stuff you can do. So, I decided to start this blog as a way to help you keep learning outside of the classroom and to share with you some of the cool things that I see other people doing that I just can’t squeeze into a two hour class.